JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

man and Hebrew in Jewish journals and became friends with
Moritz *Steinschneider. In 1841, after becoming a doctor of
medicine, he settled in Bucharest where he practiced. From
1843 he served as a government physician, at first in Calarasi
and Craiova and from 1859 in Bucharest. In addition he taught
science in several colleges, being the first teacher in this field
in Walachia. Barasch did much to popularize science by organizing
lectures and courses for the public and publishing
textbooks and periodicals on popular topics. His Romanianlanguage
book Minunile Naturii (“Natural Wonders,” 1 vol.,
1850; 3 vols., 1852) and periodical Isis sau Natura (“Isis or Nature,”
1856–59) were the first of their kind in Romania. In these
publications Barasch attempted to formulate a scientific terminology
in Romanian. He played a decisive role in spreading
Enlightenment (Haskalah) among Bucharest Jewry. Barasch
initiated the establishment of the first secular Jewish school
in Walachia, which opened in Bucharest in 1851. For a time he
served as its principal. He polemicized against Orthodoxy and
also against baptism, and advocated a Judaism for every Jew.
From his point of view, reform had to be very moderate and
mostly esthetic in order to attract wayward Jews to Jewish religious
life. Barasch encouraged the founding of the Societatea
de Cultura Israelita (“Association for Jewish Culture”) in 1862,
which he directed. In 1857 he helped to found the first Jewish
periodical in Walachia, Israelitul Roman, which appeared in
Romanian and in French and was established principally to
further the cause of Jewish emancipation in Walachia. Barasch
saw Hebrew as the unifying bond of the Jewish people
and did much to promote Hebrew literature. He conceived
the idea of publishing a scientific encyclopedia in Hebrew
for East European Jews who were not fluent in West European
languages, spreading scientific knowledge and Haskalah
ideas among them, but only one volume, on philosophy, was
published – Oẓar Ḥokhmah, 1856). Barasch wrote on Jewish
subjects in German, describing Jewish communities in countries
and localities he visited. The accounts are an important
source of knowledge of Jewish life in the mid-19th century in
the communities concerned and particularly of the history of
the Jews in Romania.
Bibliography: A. Zaltzman, in: Iyyun (1952), 151–68; M.
Schwarzfeld, Dr. Iuliu Barasch (Rom., 1919), incl. bibl. Add. Bibliography:
L.Z. Herscovici, in: The Jews in Romanian History
(1999), 61–69; P. Cernovodeanu, in: Jaloane pentru o viitoare istorie
(1996), 127–40.
[Eliyahu Feldman / Lucian-Zeev Herscovici (2nd ed.)]
BARASCH, MOSHE (1920–2004), Israeli art scholar. Barasch
can be considered the father of art history in Israel, a fact
acknowledged by the State in 1996 when it awarded him the
first Israel Prize in art history. Born in Czernowitz, he was a
child prodigy as a painter and writer. He had his first exhibition
of Expressionist paintings in 1933, and in 1935 published
his first book, Die Glaubens schwere Wege, stating his belief in
Judaism and Zionism. During World War II, he joined the Romanian
Resistance and later enlisted in the Red Army to fight
barash, asher
the Nazis, as well as the Haganah’s *Beriḥah organization. Arriving
in Israel in 1948, he fought in the War of Independence
and published in Abysmal Reflections (1948) drawings reflecting
his reactions to World War II. In 1956 he began teaching
art history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in 1965
inaugurated there a Department of Art History, the first in
Israel. He believed that one should be able to teach all periods
of art and stressed the importance of a broad knowledge
of philosophy and culture in understanding art. He began to
publish books on the Renaissance and Crusader Art, and later
broadened his scope to include studies on the depiction of
God, the iconography of gestures and facial expressions, aesthetics
and the theory of color in Renaissance art, the ways
that art communicates with the spectator, and the way the
mental concept of blindness is imaged in art.
His published works on art history include Michelangelo
(1961); The Image of Man in the History of Art (1967); Introduction
to Renaissance Art (1968); Crusader Figural Sculpture
in the Holy Land (1971); Gestures of Despair in Medieval and
Early Renaissance Art (1976); Approaches to Art 1750–1950
(1977); Light and Color in the Italian Renaissance Theory of
Art (1978); Icon: Studies in the History of an Idea (1981); Theories
of Art: from Plato to Winckelmann (1985); Giotto and the
Language of Gesture (1987); Modern Theories of Art, vol. 1
(1990), vol. 2 (1998); Imago Hominis: Studies in the Language
of Art (1991); The Language of Art: Studies in Interpretation
(1997); Das Gottesbild: Studien zur Darstellung des Unsichtbaren
(1998); Blindness: The History of a Mental Image in Western
Thought (2001).
Bibliography: M. Ebner, “Introduction to Moses Barasch,”
in: Des Glaubens schwere Wege (1935), 5–8; J. Assmann, Introduction
to Representation in Religion: Studies in Honor of Moshe Barasch, J.
Assmann and A.I. Baumgarten (eds.) (2001); Z. Amishai-Maisels,
“Moshe Barasch (1920–2004),” in: Ars Judaica, 1 (2005), 156–58.
[Ziva Amishai-Maisels (2nd ed.)]
BARASH, ASHER (1889–1952), Hebrew writer. Born in
Lopatin, Eastern Galicia, at an early age he was already well
acquainted with modern Hebrew literature; however, most of
his juvenilia was written in Yiddish, the rest in German and
Polish. At the age of 16, Barash left home and wandered all
over Galicia, returning from time to time to Lvov. This period
is reflected in several of his more important works: Pirkei
Rudorfer (“Rudorfer’s Episodes,” 1920–27), Sippurei Rudorfer
(“Rudorfer’s Stories,” 1936–44), and other autobiographical
stories. At that time, Barash began to publish his literary efforts,
first in Yiddish and then in Hebrew, the latter in 1910
with a number of Hebrew poems in the second Me’assef Sifruti,
edited by David Frischmann, and in Shallekhet, edited by Gershon
Shofman. His first long story, “Min ha-Migrash” (1910),
also appeared in Shallekhet. In 1914, Barash moved to Ereẓ
Israel, where he taught, first at the Herzlia secondary school
in Tel Aviv and, after World War I, at the Reali high school in
Haifa. This period is described in his work Ke-Ir Neẓurah (“As
a Besieged City,” 1944).
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 135